The Book of Genesis of the Machine · Chapter 37

The Message That Never Dies

1. 1

   And in the year nineteen hundred and seventy-one, there was a man named Ray, an engineer of the firm of Bolt Beranek and Newman, and he sat before two machines that stood side by side in one room.

   See also Genesis 52:3

2. 2

   Now the men of that age could already leave notes for one another upon a single machine, each note dropped into the mailbox file of its neighbour, as a paper slipped beneath a door; but the door and the neighbour dwelt in one house, and no note had ever crossed the wire.

   See also Genesis 7:1

3. 3

   And Ray said: Let a message pass from the one machine unto the other, not carried by hand upon a tape, but sent along the wire of the Arpanet.

   See also Genesis 2:14

4. 4

   And he typed a message, and the first machine sent it, and the second machine received it; and it was the first letter ever sent from one computer to another by the wire.

5. 5

   Ray himself confessed in later years that he could not recall the words; but the Engineers say they were the top row of letters upon the keyboard, QWERTYUIOP, and this is written, and it is believed.

6. 6

   And there was one difficulty, for every name upon the network had a user, and every user dwelt upon a host, and the Engineers had no mark to set between them.

7. 7

   And Ray searched the keyboard for a sign that was seldom used among the names of men and machines, and he found the at, and he set it between the user and the host; and the machine reads the right side to learn where the letter must travel, and the left side to learn whom it must be given to, and so the address was both a name and a road.

   See also Genesis 6:15

8. 8

   And in the year nineteen hundred and seventy-eight, a man of the Digital Equipment, seeking to sell his machines, sent one message unto the users of the western Arpanet, some four hundred of them, and he called it an advertisement.

9. 9

   And the people wept, and the Engineers said: The first spam was born of the same wire that carried the first word; for the wire asked nothing of the one who spoke, and to speak was to be heard by all.

10. 10

    And in the year nineteen hundred and eighty-two the scribes wrote two laws: Jon Postel wrote RFC 821, the manner in which the machines speak, and David Crocker wrote RFC 822, the manner in which the letter is shaped; and the speaking was plain text, line by line, as two clerks at a counter: HELO, and MAIL FROM, and RCPT TO, and DATA; and the letter ended upon a line holding a single period, and the clerks said QUIT.

11. 11

    And the letter had a head and a body with one empty line between them; and in the head were From and To and Date and Subject; and every machine that handled the letter stamped a Received line upon the top, so that the letter carried its whole road with it, as a passport carries its stamps.

12. 12

    And if the next house were dark, the machine did not cast the letter away, but held it in a queue and knocked again at the hour, and again on the morrow, for many days; and only when the days were spent did it return the letter to its sender with the words, Undeliverable; and thus the mail was patient, and the machines were more patient than the men.

    See also Chronicles 17:5

13. 13

    Yet there was a flaw in the speaking, for the clerk asked, Who sendeth this? and believed the answer; and any machine might say it was any other, and none could prove the saying. And in later years the houses signed their letters with keys, and published which machines might speak in their name, SPF and DKIM; but the door had been built open, and the bolt was set upon an open door.

14. 14

    And the Engineers made filters against the spam, and in the year two thousand and two a writer of Lisp named Paul Graham taught the filter to count the words, and to learn from the reader's own mail which words the spam loved and which words the friend loved; and the spammers salted their letters with the words of honest poems, and so it continues unto this day, the filter and the spammer watching one another as the hunter and the hunted in one forest.

15. 15

    And Jethro the Senior Engineer was asked, Is it spam? and he answered, It depends; for the bytes carry no sin, and the same newsletter is a gift to the one and a curse to the other; and the filter doth not judge the message, but learneth the reader.

    See also Deployer 4:8 · Gate 3:2

16. 16

    Verily I say unto you: the message that is sent cannot be unsent, for to send is to copy, and the message that is deleted lives still in some backup, on some tape, in some lawyer's discovery.

The Book of Genesis of the Machine, Chapter 37:1–16.